Money for the modernization of transport infrastructure
The Romanian government has allocated more than 12 billion lei for the rehabilitation of the country's railway and road transport infrastructure.
Sorin Iordan, 17.05.2024, 14:00
Over 12 billion lei, about 2.4 billion Euros, were allocated by the Romanian Government for the rehabilitation of the country’s transport infrastructure. The executive met on Thursday to approve, among other things, two major investments in the railway and road sectors. The first project is that of rehabilitating the railway line that connects Focşani, the Vrancea county seat, located in the southeast of the country, to Roman, a city in Neamţ county, located in the northeast. The route, almost 150 kilometers long, is part of the Pan-European Corridor 9, which is 3,400 km long and connects the capital of Finland, Helsinki, located on the Baltic Sea, with the Greek city of Alexandroupoli, a port on the Aegean Sea in southern Europe.
The project, included in Romania’s General Transport Master Plan, received a little over 11 billion lei (about 2.2 billion Euros). The government has shown that the money comes from external non-reimbursable funds, through the Transport Program 2021-2027 and the Connecting Europe Facility, from the state budget, from the own revenues of the National Railway Company, as well as from other legally established sources. The works, that will last 36 months, aim to increase safety in the area where the railway lines intersect with the road network, to significantly improve transport conditions, to build passages and modernize level crossings, objectives which, according to the authorities, have an important role in the sustainable development of the localities on the route by reducing polluting emissions, travel times, as well as by increasing the number of passengers and the amounts of transported goods.
The second project that received funding from the Bucharest administration aims to rehabilitate a sector between kilometers 44 and 86 of the A1 Bucharest-Pitesti Highway, the busiest in the country. The works will aim to rehabilitate the road surface and the bridges on the 42 kilometers of the segment and, according to the Ministry of Transport, this will lead to an increase in the degree of traffic safety, to a reduction in travel times, a reduction in the cost for preventing environmental pollution and an increase in the duration of operation. For achieving this project, the Government allocated 1.1 billion lei (approximately 221 million Euros) from the state budget, and the duration of works is 48 months.
Romania has an outdated transport infrastructure that has turned into a veritable bottomless coin sack in recent decades. Of the more than 22,000 kilometers of railway that cross the country, just a little over 8,500 are electrified. As to roads, Romania has almost 90,000 kilometers of public roads, but less than half are modernized. As far as highways are concerned, last year Romania exceeded 1,000 kilometers, below Hungary and Croatia, above Bulgaria, Serbia and Slovenia, but Romania’s surface area and population are much higher than those of the above-mentioned states. (LS)
